A Frosted Ring of Blood and Romance
by Alexa Aurion
Summary: Parts of Kratos' life with Lloyd and Anna. No matter how much fun they had, and how much he hid it, there was always his fear of her death.[Kranna] [Oneshot]


Okay, hi. This is my first attempt at a Kranna fic, with Anna actually in it. God, I need to write a full story about it some time, but for now, will this one-shot do? o.o?

Um… what was it… Oh yeah. If any details are wrong, _it's not because I don't know the game!_ (Probably) This was actually story written as an English homework (O.O), but bear with me, please? I guess it might not be wrong; Anna's life isn't really precise.

Disclaimer: Tales of Symphonia is not mine.

Let's go:D

* * *

A Frosted Ring of Blood and Romance

Kratos fingered the ring carefully, admiring the wavering flames of the nearby campfire catching the silver engravings, sending shafts of dazzling light into the velvet night sky. He was nervous; worried if she'd say no. He'd known her… for less than two months, and he honestly believed she loved him? Even _he,_ with his reckless nature, wouldn't push it that far; in short, he was taking a long shot in the dark blindfolded.

Anna twisted, moaning unhappily in her sleep. Kratos jumped, and, slipping the ring into his pocket, he crept over to her.

"Anna?" he asked quietly, as not to startle her.

She yawned and, brushing some of her coffee hair out of her eyes, se turned to look at him, a questioning look on her face.

"I… I mean… W-would you…" Kratos blushed, subconsciously wondering if his complexion now matched his auburn hair.

Anna laughed kindly at his awkwardness. "Just say it and get it done with!"

Kratos hid his face, rather ashamed, until he was sure his blush had subdued. This wasn't like him in the slightest: ordinarily, he was an unabashed, stolid mercenary. Anna seemed to change that; she brought out his more emotional side, much to his annoyance.

"Anna, will you… will you marry me?" he asked eventually, withdrawing his hand from his pocket, pulling out the silver engagement ring.

Anna gasped, staring at the ring, overcome by its beauty in the dancing firelight.

"…Anna," he prompted her nervously, snapping her out of her trance-like state.

"I…" Anna breathed, and a strange look crossed her face, somewhere between adoration and disbelief.

"Well?" Kratos felt as if he was baiting a lion not asking her a question. Next thing he knew, he was being bear-hugged by a tearful Anna. He blinked, stunned. Was this the same obnoxious girl he'd rescued from on e of the numerous slave ranches? The same girl who gave him a mouthful when he said he'd leave her at the next town they came to?

All of her customary sarcasm and smart remarks had left her, leaving a frail, hurt girl, the girl who was hugging—or more accurately, strangling him—half an inch from tears.

After a few moments, Kratos gently disengaged Anna's arms from around his neck.

"You haven't answered yet," he reminded her.

She scowled; then laughed, "Kratos, you've _got_ to learn how to read actions!" Receiving a bemused look from her fiancé, she continued, "Would I hug you like that if I was going to say no?" Kratos shook his head as realisation hit home.

"Thank you." Anna curled up beside the fire.

"You should get some sleep now."

"But I'm not sleepmmph…" Anna's protest died in her throat.

"Indeed." Kratos smirked, watching Anna's restful body. This was the beginning of what could be a…_interesting_ relationship.

* * *

Anna clung to Kratos, holding their baby son against her chest. The boy howled miserably at the top of his small lungs, feeling the sudden drop in temperature. Anna could tell Kratos was getting a headache from the constant noise. 

The young man clasped Anna's free hand in his own.

"There," he murmured, pointing at the mountain-rimmed island.

"Wow…How'd I ever get away?" Anna murmured. "Is there any way in?" Kratos shook his head. Being the not-so-simple mercenary he was, Anna knew better than to question his judgment.

"No way at all?" Anna leaned over the edge of the boat, one hand resting on the railing.

"None, except…air." Kratos hesitated, giving Anna the distinct impression that he didn't want to mention it.

"How…?" Anna looked up at the sky. "What, ask an angel?" she continued sarcastically.

Kratos spun around, staring at her, wide-eyed.

"Wh-what?" The look on his face was making Anna feel uncomfortable. "It was a _joke._"

Kratos seemed to relax slightly. "Do you still want to go?"

"Would I have dragged it out if I didn't?"

Kratos rolled his eyes and didn't answer. He could hardly believe he had survived two years married to Anna; two and a half years since he proposed to her by the campfire.

In that time, their son Lloyd had been born.

Now, as their anniversary 'present', they were visiting Anna's family.

Kratos wrapped his arms around Anna's waist.

"Hey!" she protested, attempting to slap his face. "What're you doing?"

"Getting us there," he smirked. "That is what you want, is it not?"

Anna didn't reply; she was too busy gaping at the pair of semi-transparent cerulean wings that had spread on her husband's back.

"Are those real?" she gasped. Kratos didn't answer, and although he looked amused, his eyes were screaming in silent agony.

"Kratos, what's the matter?" Anna asked, seeing his pained eyes. He blinked, and the amused look vanished, and was replaced by a darker expression, one she recognised from their first meetings, when she was still a slave in the ranches. Kratos shook her inquisitive hands off his wings abruptly. Anna recoiled in his strong grasp as she saw his angry look. Something in his eyes told her to stay silent as they flew.

"Spark-a-li's!" Lloyd chirped, seeing his father's wings glitter beautifully, like the sun on a calm, slow-moving stream in mid-summer. He reached out to touch them over Anna's shoulder, who, feeling wounded by Kratos' sudden stolidity, tried to stop the two year old to no avail. Much to her surprise, when Lloyd's chubby fingers came into contact with the bizarrely firm wings, Kratos' wince faded, and the look in his eyes replaced by a semi-content, confused look.

_That's nice,_ Anna thought indignantly. _Just let you son touch your wings; not your wife; not the one you swore not to keep secrets from! _Her thoughts made her feel like she had betrayed him; betrayed her husband, her lover. She didn't know Kratos as well as she'd like to, she didn't understand him fully, least of all about his…angel wings. And yet, here she was, accusing him of favouritism! Even so, he could _try_ not to be so open about it.

_Two can play at that game,_ she thought suddenly. _Let's see how much _he_ like silent treatment. _Smirking to herself, Anna rearranged Lloyd in her arms. She gazed ahead at Flanoir, the Snowy City, their destination, where she had grown up; Her favourite place in the worlds—bar her home city of Luin.

* * *

Anna couldn't sleep, so she lay awake, staring at the forbidding shadows dancing in the corners of her room. It was well after midnight, and she knew exactly what was keeping her awake. She hated it. 

His wings. Those cerulean feathered appendages. Why did he keep them hidden from her? Why didn't he ever tell her?

…What else could he be hiding?

She moaned, irritated by her own thoughts, and turned over. Kratos was still up with her 'interested' parents. The one night they could sleep in a proper bed, and it looked like he would miss it.

It was always Kratos' job to put Lloyd to bed—the boy fussed if Anna did it—but no, her parents insisted, she had to get some sleep while they spoke with Kratos.

Spoke with Kratos. Huh. Interrogating him, that was closer to the truth.

Kratos had been silent ever since they reached Flanoir. But it wasn't an angry silence, like she had found herself expecting; it was an unhappy, bewildered silence. Why, though? H always knew the answer to every thing. Or, at least, he acted that way, making him seem snobbish and arrogant at times.

The bedroom door creaked open, and she heard someone creep into the room. Anna knew, without looking, who it was.

_Kratos._

Anna pretended to be asleep, waiting for him to move. When he didn't, she rolled over to see what he was doing.

He was facing away from her, staring out the window, chin resting on hands, swallow-tail cape loose around his shoulders; silently watching the flakes of snow spiral to the ground like falling blossom.

"Beautiful, isn't it?" he asked suddenly, very quietly. Anna stared. "At times of peril and war, such beauty in virtually non-existent." Kratos paused. He was right: the war that was raging had destroyed every sight-seeing city, town, village and ruin centuries ago.

"Would you care to take a walk?" Did he realise she was awake?

"I…guess so." Kratos showed no surprise to the fact she was awake; Anna later summarised that he'd already known.

Outside, Anna found she had once again misjudged Flanoir's frigid temperatures. It was stupid of her, in retrospect. She'd spent twelve years of her life there!

Kratos noticed her shivering and wrapped his cape around her. Blushing, Anna let him, noting that he wasn't in the slightest bothered about the heat—or, rather, the lack of it.

"Look," Kratos told her in a subtle, commanding tone. She did so—she had been staring at her feet—and was astounded by the view before them.

"It's…it's…" Anna couldn't find _any_ words to describe the landscape. Not without hugely under-exaggerating it's beauty.

Snow glittered like diamonds, every house under it silent and tranquil, reaching for the horizon like a desert starved man reaching towards water; the midnight sky shone overhead, stars and moon globules of silver, blazing from the abyss of night.

"…Something no words will work for," Kratos finished. He slipped his arm around Anna, who, remembering earlier, was all too willing to shake him off, but didn't because something told her that would be what a spoilt ten year old would do in a sulk. She hated appearing to be spoilt or childish, for she was neither, and Kratos had admitted that after watching her work in the slave ranches. (Anna had overheard this; Kratos would never say that to her face.)

"Kratos…why…?" Anna left her question hanging, finding it harder to ask than she had anticipated.

Kratos looked at her sadly, moving a few feet away from her. She half-expected his wings to open on his back, but they didn't.

"…Not just anyone can touch an angel's wings," he began hesitantly. "I knew that much before…before today." He stopped, looking uncomfortable.

"I'm _just anyone!_" Anna burst out, seething. "And…And Lloyd isn't!"

Kratos shook his head fervently. "No, I don't mean that!" he exclaimed hastily. "What I mean is…" He trailed off, and Anna realised he didn't know what he meant.

"This is just speculation, but… Is there a difference between you and Lloyd?" he asked, thinking hard. There had to be one…

"He's a boy?" Anna guessed. _No, that's not it,_ Kratos thought._ It still hurt when Mithos… Wait!_

"He has my blood…" he began breathlessly, hardly daring to believe the brainwave that had struck him. "_'Only blood of an angel can touch the soul of the angel' _" He looked up to the bemused look Anna was giving him.

"That means…?"

"Lloyd is my son, he has my blood—that's the _'blood of an angel' _part. He can touch my wings, my soul, without causing me intense pain because of his, my, blood." Kratos felt his uncustomary excitement ebb away.

"Your wings are your soul?" Anna repeated, her mind moving slowly, numb with the sudden flood of information.

"Yes. I knew that beforehand." Kratos looked thoughtful. "The colour represents the…'colour' of their soul; the shape…form…represents their intentions, their mind," he explained. Anna looked slightly less confused, though not by much.

"You need only remember that you can't touch them, he added.

Anna groaned. "You idiot. Leave the only thing I need to know 'til last, why don't you," she said. Feigning a hurt look, Kratos turned away.

Something cold and wet collided with the back of his neck. He spun on his heel to find Anna failing to conceal a guilty look. Kratos pursed his lips, trying not to smile.

"Gotcha!" Anna stuck her tongue out cheekily, pulling her hand out from behind her back and hurled its contents—another snowball—at Kratos, who casually ducked, letting the missile sail harmlessly over his head.

Feeling rebellious, he squashed two handfuls of snow into a snowball, hurling it at his wife.

"Ow!" she squeaked, receiving a well-aimed face-full of snow. "Alright, that's it!" Quicker than Kratos thought possible, she made and threw three more projectiles at him. He successfully avoided two, but the third struck him square on the nose.

"Ha-ha!" Anna jeered, dancing tantalisingly on the spot as Kratos stood, gingerly rubbing his nose.

"This means war!" Kratos growled, tossing Anna his shield and drawing his sword. Anna raised an eyebrow sceptically.

"It's your funeral!" she declared as she grabbed a handful of snow.

Anyone watching would have been met with the strangest sight: two adults, both in their twenties, burying each other and playing in the snow like a pair of hyper five year olds, including the falling over in excitement; to Kratos, it was a form of ecstasy. Him and Anna, playing together, frolicking in the snow like young lambs. He wished it could last forever, but he knew it wouldn't: angels were immortal, and his lover, Anna, a human, was mortal. Even being a renegade angel didn't change that. Someday, she would grow old and die in his arms. And Lloyd would follow soon after. His love for them may well be undying, but there lives would pass like that of a butterfly, almost mere seconds compared to the length of _his_ life. Soon after their deaths, Kratos knew his soul would be entirely consumed by grief. They were the reason he lived; the reason he breathed; without them, he would become an empty, emotionless, expendable doll, a shell, a ghost of his former self.

A few hours later, as it neared dawn, Kratos and Anna returned to her parents' house, their clothes sopping, completely exhausted, but happy and content in each other's arms.

They'd start their travelling again, this time to Iselia, to keep Anna safe from the ranch master that was pursuing them, but not before Kratos gave Anna a pleasant surprise.

"Kratos…" Anna whispered in awe, holding up a silver necklace, complete with one of Kratos' feathers. "I…" She gazed at it, transfixed, and began laughing, much to Kratos' surprise. She shook off his questioning look, setting the necklace down. "Here," she said, her cheeks tinged pale pink. She held out a small box.

"Thank you…" Kratos took the box gently out her hands; Lloyd watching this exchange with some curiosity. Sensing Lloyd's curiosity, and feeling curious himself, Kratos flipped the lid of the box back, revealing the item inside.

He gasped audibly.

"Anna… that's…"

Lying in a bed of velvet was a bronze locket, inscribed with the letter 'A', for_ Aurion_, he guessed. Surrounding it, the angelic words for '_Love of My Life; Forever shall be'_ were inscribed. It was surprisingly accurate, since the angelic language was only used by the highest members of the Church and, obviously, angels; Anna certainly wasn't a lower member of the Church—like himself, in a sense—she simply wasn't religious.

"Open it," Anna told him. Blinking, obeyed, thinking, _Isn't it empty?_

He was proved wrong as he flipped the catch and the front swung away.

"Where was this?" he questioned, staring at the photo of himself, Anna and Lloyd.

Anna laughed. "Idiot, it was Lloyd's first winter!"

"In Asgard?" he realised, remembering Anna's friends, Crystal and Axeliha, taking the mickey.

"He works it out!" Anna exclaimed.

Kratos retorted, calling her a kid, to which Anna replied in an angry manner, forgetting Lloyd was in the room, and swore at Kratos. Lloyd repeated this proudly.

"Lloydie, that is not something you should say," Kratos told the boy. "Your mother was being bad."

"Bad Mommy!" Lloyd said, trying, and failing, to act like Kratos.

"Oh, _wonderful._" Anna rolled her eyes and folded her arms. "Now there's two of them."

Kratos leaned over to whisper something in Lloyd's ear. Lloyd's hazel eyes widened as he turned to stare at his mother.

"Mommy, were dose wead peoble your parends?" he asked in wide eyed innocence.

"Well, yeah." Anna nodded.

"Dey were wead!" he repeated. "Yew no hab parends, Daddy!"

"No, I don't." Anna gaped. _Why in Sylvarant was he lying?_

Kratos caught her look, and shrugged. "Not any more."

Anna dropped the subject, knowing better than to enquire further into the matter.

"Should we get going?" she asked instead. Kratos nodded, lifting Lloyd into a comfortable position on his back.

"Yes, let's."

* * *

Lloyd toddled unsteadily after his Mommy. Now he was three, he was a big boy. He shouldn't depend on his Daddy. He wanted to _be_ his Daddy: strong, fearless and heroic. Mommy said he already was, but Daddy was so different. 

While he was puzzling over this, something sharp dug into the back of his neck. He screamed out, calling for his Mommy, for his Daddy. He knew no more, save a fuzzy, falling sensation.

"_Daddy!_"

-

Kratos spun, hearing his son's terrified scream, feeling panic rise in his chest.

_Where was Anna?_

Was that her, behind where Lloyd—

What! She wasn't…She _wasn't…!_

That couldn't be Anna! She wasn't the one who just knocked Lloyd…no, she wasn't. _Anna _would _never_ do that!

_It_ had struck Lloyd, whatever _it_ was, and Kratos wasn't going to let that pass.

"You will pay for that," he hissed angrily, his sword drawn in a scrape and a flash of steel.

Without knowing what possessed him, he lunged forward, blade first, eyes forced shut. A horrible, warm sensation travelled up his right arm.

Blood. The tears of battle, of war.

Fighting the urge to retched or turn and run, Kratos forced himself to look up; up into the gentle green eyes of…

_Anna._

All illusions lifted; Kratos' worst fears were realised.

_He'd killed his wife._

"No," he croaked. "NO!"

Anna was smiling gently, but sadly. An unearthly eerie glow surrounded her.

_'Kratos…'_ her voice, it was in his head; it was silent, but he heard it, like he was thinking it… or Anna was thinking for him.

_'Kratos, you couldn't do anything else,'_ she began, the sad smile never leaving her lips. _'If you had left me, I would've killed you… and Lloyd.'_

"Lloyd's… alive!" Kratos whispered, stunned.

'_I can sense him, slightly.'_ Her sad look intensified tenfold. _'But I doubt he'll live.'_

"No…" Kratos choked, falling to his knees. "No, I… Lloyd…"

_'Kratos… I was the one who attacked him, not you.'_

"But Anna…I…I killed you!" Tears, tears that Kratos thought had abandoned him long ago, sprang to his eyes, and raced down his cheeks, cutting white runnels through the grime and blood.

_'There wasn't any other way.'_ Anna rested her hand delicately on his cheek. _'I told you.'_

She gave him another sad smile, one that almost broke his aching heart.

_'…Someday, we'll be together again.'_

With her last proclamation, Anna's ghost-like form vanished.

"Anna?" Kratos whispered. "ANNA! LLOYD!"

The tears, they wouldn't stop. Anna and Lloyd, they were gone. Forever.

His life with them, over in a mere moment. He remembered his thoughts during their snowball fight; he had been right, their lives _did_ pass too quickly. One sweet moment, one he would cherish forever.

"Why must I be cursed?" he sobbed, finding the grief more unbearable than he could possibly imagine. "WHY!" he collapsed, cursing the fates, several lifetimes' worth of tears flooding down his face.

Anna…

Lloyd…

Both were gone. Eternally seperated from him.


End file.
